Poor residents were promised Wi-Fi service. The Los Angeles Times found they didn't get it

From a storefront in Inglewood, Manchester Community Technologies went to work and in 2015 declared the firm had created corridors of free public Wi-Fi access for Internet-starved communities from Long Beach to Pasadena. In a report to the California Public Utilities Commission in March of 2015 documenting what it did with nearly $500,000 in ratepayer fees, the company said it had deployed free Wi-Fi hot spots at eight parks and 16 community Wi-Fi networks, "enabling over 100,000 community based unique end-users the opportunity to connect to the Internet." But today, most of those networks and hot spots don't link to the Internet.

Revlyn Williams, Manchester Community Technologies' founder and executive director, said the networks had all functioned at one time. Maintaining them has proved difficult, she said, because businesses that form the backbone of the networks sometimes shut down their routers at night, lose equipment to theft or don't rely on the Internet enough to keep it running. With the three-year grant now expired, her company will persist in its efforts with "God's help," Williams said.